Sunday, 17 September 2017

As is usual, plans of mice and men often go astray. I was hoping to have a bit more done by now, but what with the boss having a bunion operation and demanding endless cups of tea and other stuff and on top of which I tweaked a disc in my back which seriously put a crimp in the proceedings. However, I have managed to add more bits to my terrain for PBI in 28mm.

First up, I have enlarged my cornfield to 30cm x 30cm.

Next - a walled enclosure, which can be merely a walled enclosure or an orchard.

Also, ploughed fields which measure 60cm x 60cm, made of a doormat glued down and lightly dry brushed - dead easy. All the vehicles in shot are 1/48 scale to give some perspective.

Next up a really nice church for the Western theatres from the company Sarisa.

On the gaming front, we have been playing Dracula's America. All good fun, although still wrapping my head around how the game works. But, the Sons of the South and the Colonel have been kicking butt.

The Colonel summons a horror who gives Calamity Jane a right shillacking

The other lot are hiding. Not gonna win you a game.

Not a lot of pictures were taken of this game as it was a four player game and the Sons of the South were being ganged up on. Despite these odds and the fact that the other players were very uncoordinated, the Sons of the South kicked arse.

Tomorrow night's game is Dragon Rampant. May the dice gods be with you.

Thursday, 17 August 2017

In my last post I hadn't quite finished my PBI terrain. I have now marked up all the squares in an unobtrusive manner but, when you get your eye in, you can see it. I hope the following pictures will give you some idea of what I mean.

The next set of pictures shows the table laid out and a few posed shots.

I still have more terrain to add, in the shape of more buildings and some drop in terrain features such as corn field, marshes. At some point I am going to create a full river and some small hills.

On the gaming front, we had a game of Lion Rampant the week before last. The less said about that the better - got absolutely spanked! My goblin army failed every courage test and melted away.

The Colonel surveys the scene

Last Monday, Adrian introduced me to Dracula's America, which is a good fun game. It's cowboys and indians plus things that go bump in the night. Here are a few pictures of the game:

The Sons of the South form a firing line

The Sons of the South execute their cunning plan - grab the loot first

The Bounty Hunters mill about

The Bounty Hunters get involved in a bloody fight in the farm house

Nasty things lurking in the cornfield

The playing cards you can see are part of the activation system and tend to create a game within a game. All good fun. Definitely going to give this a go again.

Thursday, 3 August 2017

It has got to be said that over the last few months I have seriously thought about knocking this blog on the head but, slowly but surely, I am getting my mojo back.

This is started way back in February when I picked up a rather nasty little virus which laid me low for two weeks and I then spent the next five weeks feeling very fatigues and lacking in motivation. I did manage to get to Salute; completely missed the bloggers' meet up, though thinking I would soon get back into the blogging bit. Then life seemed to just get in the way; what with end of season rugby, Lions Tour to New Zealand and the fact that we actually did have a bit of a summer, which sadly appears to have gone awol at the moment. Just when I was beginning to think about restarting the blog, I got knocked off my bike! All is well again now, however, and barring accidents, acts of God, should be more regular.

Anyway, I have decided to make a games table for PBI WWII rules by Peter Pig. As anybody knows, this is a grid based game using 6 inch squares designed for 15mm figures. However, at my age, I cannot see them very well so I am doing square foot terrain and 28mm figures.

I went down the local wood yard and got 10mm ply cut into two foot squares. Then off to local fabric land to purchase 3 metres of teddybear fur. A bit of shaving, cutting and pasting followed. I have ended up with this: ...

The great British summer was not helping as it turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag of a day.

As you can see from the picture to the right, the sun eventually turned up and helped dry out the boards.

Eventually, after everything had dried out and been thoroughly brushed, I managed to set it all up in the summer house/game shed.

I now have 6 foot by 10 foot of games table. I just have to come up with a way of discreetly marking the squares. I put on a few bits of terrain just to give a rough idea of what a game layout would look like.

When the table is more heavily populated with terrain, it should look much better. On that front, I have put together a couple of building squares which have been sitting under the bed for at least a year. This will be an ongoing project.

Next Monday, we have a multi-player game of Lion Rampant. Hope to remember to take some pictures, instead of merely swearing at the dice gods.